HIV
Why At-Risk Adults, 50 and Over, Should Request HIV Screening Tests
For many aging adults, certain exams and tests at the doctor’s is a given. Those exams, along with their healthcare providers who pay for them, understand that with age comes certain increased health risks. One area of concern, however, has seemed to skip over this generation of adults. In the world of HIV screening tests, many doctors and other healthcare professionals simply overlook those within the older adult range. In light of this oversight, in 2006, the CDC issued a statement recommending that adults aged 50-64 be screened for HIV.
Research prior to that date had shown that this portion of the population had some living with an infection but not knowing it. Hence, we saw this call to healthcare givers to make a habit of testing older adults for the virus. While the suggestion was heeded, the effort was not sustained. This has caused some concern.
In the years leading up to 2006, the numbers were not high as far as HIV testing for this age group was concerned. Within just a three-year period, the percentage dropped from over 5% to just under 4%, this all taking place prior to the CDC‘s exhortation. In hopes of increasing awareness for these adults and their health care providers, the recommendation for HIV testing to be considered routine for this age group went out in 2006. The numbers did pick up immediately after the suggestion by the CDC was made. However, percentages only increased by one or two points. The news that researchers found most alarming was that this increase was not sustained. The number of older adults tested dropped within a couple years to below the average before the recommendation. Risk factors, however, have remained constant for this age group.
Awareness of these facts will hopefully spark additional efforts to revisit what was recommended nearly a decade ago. Not only should doctors be aware and do what they can for HIV screening tests for these adults, but patients may need to self-advocate in this instance. While no one looks forward to the list of health issues faced as we age, HIV is a big one to have crossed off the list. So check with your doctor and ask about HIV risks and testing at your next visit.
Risk of HIV Decreases with More Secondary Education
8 years ago
A study was performed in Botswana that revealed just one year more of secondary education produced a drastic reduction in the risk of contracting HIV. In a part of the world where approximately 1 in 4 will contract HIV over the course of a decade following school, reducing the percentage to 17 would mean thousands of fewer cases of HIV.
Also interesting to note is the fact that decreased risk of HIV infection was more significant in young women than men. It has been speculated that the reason behind these findings is that the additional year of education during this crucial stage in adolescence keeps students from participating in the same amount of risky behavior they would be taking part in if school were already over. For women especially, education seems to have a major impact, and may be a cost effective way to reduce HIV infection across Africa, where may nations currently do not provide the same educational opportunities for young girls as they do for boys.
What are the implications of this study for a nation plagued by HIV such as Botswana where a 2013 study revealed that 22 percent of individuals in the 15 to 49 age group were infected? The fact is that providing an extra year of schooling to secondary school students for free is far less of a financial burden on the nation than trying to provide treatment after infection.
The 8 percent difference in risk represents a significant improvement for both the health and the economy of the nation. HIV infection is not the only aspect of health that is improved as nations provide more education. Other concerns, such as child mortality, are also positively affected when a nation places a great emphasis on school and learning.
In short, when it comes to risk of HIV infection, education matters. Indeed, no matter where in the world you live, education plays a vital role for children to remain healthy, especially in parts of the world where education has life and death consequences.
Stopping the Spread of HIV Through Social Media
The trends of social media have changed how, and how quickly, information becomes publicly known. Social media can now tell us things like where the next fashion, music, and entertainment movements will occur, along with which regions of the United States are more likely to love something that other regions will hate. One application of the information now available through social media is to map out the spread of diseases such as influenza and strands of the common cold. This application could lead to more sophisticated ways of stopping the spread of HIV, by using social media to track and possibly halt further infection.
Sean Young, at the Center for Digital Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, published an article this past October dealing with a possible future, where social media can predict and even change biomedical outcomes. This translates into being able to chart, predict, and maybe even ebb the transmission of preventable infectious diseases, like HIV. Social media information, such as Twitter tweets and Facebook posts, which shows the recent – or eminent – drug and sexual related activities associated with the risk of infection, can be collected and cross-referenced with known information on HIV. In addition to education of what activities and what areas are at the highest risk of infection, this cross-referencing can help medical researchers find focal points to make testing more available. It can also help researchers make the availability of treatment an easier possibility for those getting tested and learning they’re HIV positive. Surveys are also showing that those who post about this topic, or who read about HIV through their online communities, are more likely to get themselves tested.
A cautionary tale for many is that the collection of this data is done the same way corporations are currently taking information in an attempt to raise profits. This type of marketing has created a major backlash from those who fear for their privacy. Sean Young has an answer to this caution: “Since people are already getting used to the fact that corporations are doing this, we should at least support public health researchers in using these same methods to try and improve our health and well-being.” He further added, “We’re already seeing increased support from patients and public health departments.” Young hopes that a more general acceptance of this type of data collection by medical researchers will follow suit. He, like many, believes that social media and other modern technologies are the key to stopping the spread of HIV in the future.
In Africa, Traditional Healers Can Undermine Efforts of Modern HIV Treatments
8 years ago
Imagine you start to show signs of possible HIV infection: your skin color changes, your immune system is visibly weaker than ever before, and a flu-like feeling just won’t go away. You go to your trusted healer, the traditional healer your family has seen for years, decades, possibly generations. Now, imagine this traditional healer tells you that these symptoms are not due to a blood-borne virus infecting your body, but by a curse a neighbor has placed upon you and your family. His or her treatment will not recommend antiretroviral medications, but to chant incantations and rub medical herbs into an open cut made from a razor. Although this is not heard of as a practice in any area of the United States, no matter how rural, this type of traditional healing is still very common in rural areas of Mozambique and other sub-Saharan African countries. When these traditional healers speak of curses and angered ancestors as the causes for the HIV symptoms, there is an inevitable delay between the first signs of symptoms and the administration of the first antiretroviral medicines. Prolonging this crucial timeframe shows that these traditional healers can undermine efforts of modern HIV treatments, which can harm the patient in irreparable ways, possibly causing the individual to develop AIDS before receiving the medicine he or she needs.
A study led by Carolyn Audet, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Health Policy, focused on sub-Saharan African countries. Over 60% of the rural residents in this study who started showing symptoms of HIV infection visited at least one traditional healer before consulting a trained medical professional, sometimes seeing several healers before any doctors. This caused, on average, a two-and-a-half-time longer delay for receiving the needed medicine, as over 50% of those who saw traditional healers first were initially diagnosed with having a curse placed upon them. With countries like Mozambique having over ten percent of its population infected with HIV (in the US it is roughly 0.6%), mistreatment has become an epidemic of serious concern. These delays can undermine efforts of modern HIV treatments, as many traditional healers are resistant to incorporating Western medicine into their religious and healing practices, which can seriously harm or even cause the preventable death of patients before receiving life-saving antiretroviral medicines.
HIV Cells in Semen Infect Through RNA Transmission
8 years ago
In early 2010, scientists at the University of California San Diego’s Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) discovered that seminal HIV infection among men who have sex with men is transmitted through the HIV cell’s RNA, and not the DNA as was previously thought. Later that year it was determined that this is also the case for women who are infected through sex with men – that is, through HIV cells in semen transmitting their RNA structure to the newly infected individual. Understanding this connection is critical, because, “If we want to stop the HIV epidemic, then we must know the mechanisms by which HIV uses human sex to spread,” according to the principal researcher, Davey Smith, MD, MAS. Smith is an associate professor of medicine at the University of California’s San Diego’s Division of Infectious Diseases, and is director of the CFAR’s Viral Pathogenesis Core.
The scientists made this initial discovery of the virus’s transmission by studying male partners in which one man had recently infected the other man. They compared the genetic characteristics of the HIV cells in both partners, knowing that the virus mutates at an extraordinary rate. They learned that there was more of a shared commonality between the viruses found in the seminal plasma – the semen and fluids surrounding them – than the viruses that were located in the seminal cells. HIV’s DNA is commonly found in the host’s cells, where RNA is mostly stored in the host’s plasma. With this asymmetrical commonality between the virus found in the plasma versus the virus inside the host’s cells, the scientists were able to locate the culprit of the initial transmission, which is the virus’s RNA; with this asymmetrical commonality found in every partnership of the men they studied, they determined that it is not a mix of HIV RNA and DNA infecting an individual, but that the RNA, alone, was the transmitter.
Now knowing this source of HIV transmission, scientists and researchers have been able to develop several weapons against HIV infection over the past five years. The HIV cells in semen are now understood more, and with this understanding researchers have been able to determine and develop several things. One discovery is that if a person has no detectable amount of HIV in their bloodstream, as they have been recently infected or because they are taking a successful regimen of antiretroviral medications, there can still be a contagious amount of HIV cells in their semen – and though the possibility of infection is low at that point, it is still possible. Researchers have also been able to develop vaginal gels and ointments – called vaginal microbicides – which are able to attack the HIV cell’s RNA before transmission can take place by infected semen, along with further developing antiretroviral medications which target the virus’s RNA and make it impotent towards further transmission. Though this discovery has not led to a cure within the past five years, it has certainly brought us closer to that possible cure, and has helped prevent further transmission of HIV for thousands.
